The Awareness of COVID-19 Pandemic among Educators at Amran University (a Quick Cross-Sectional Exploration Study) )  )

: This study aimed to explore Amran University educators' awareness (AUEs'A) toward COVID-19. To fulfil this aim, an on line survey using a scale of COVID-19 (SCOVID-19) was used to collect data from a sample consisted of 87 participants selected from 206 of Amran University's educators and their assistants. Descriptive statistics, one-way ANOVA and multiple regression (MR) were applied to analyze data. Results of the study revealed that participants had a good awareness about this pandemic; since they had a very good knowledge and positive attitudes and practice towards it. Besides, results of t-test revealed that there are no differences between the mean scores of AUEs'A on the SCOVID-19 at (α=0.05) referred to gender and specialization variables. In addition, results of one-way ANOVA revealed that there are no statically significant differences between and within groups' mean scores on the scales of knowledge, and practice referred to the participants' degree of education variable (DEV), while significant differences on the attitudes scale referred to this variable and the differences were in favor of professor degree. Also results revealed significant differences referred to the faculty variable (FV) only on the knowledge and attitudes scales and the differences were in favor of faculty of medicine. According to MR, results revealed a positive correlation between the variables. Also an effect of independent variables (IVs), i.e. knowledge and attitudes, on the dependent variable (DV), i.e. practice, at (α=0.05) was revealed by these results. based on the results of the study, some recommendations were recommended.


Introduction:
Globally terror and stigma from the COVID-19 as a new pandemic is a tremendous effect.COVID-19 has invaded most of the world countries, it has been firstly known in Wuhan City, China (WHO, 2020;Roy, 2020;Zhou et al., 2020).Therefore, it is a vital to avoid such terror and stigma; since it can make people conceal their infection and not seek health care immediately.Thus, separating awareness of COVID-19 among people is important to protect people from such terror and stigma.
In fact, COVID-19 threat is not comparable with other health threats because of COVID-19 has not a vaccine for prevention, but it is not the case; if people have enough good awareness (1) about this new pandemic threat.The value of people's awareness about COVID-19 can be recognized from different angles: Hygienically, socio-economically, etc. WHO, 2020).
Hygienically, if people have a well knowledge, attitudes, and practice (KAP) towards COVID-19, they will safeguard themselves from some harmful outcomes that may be lead to a collectively death.For example, if people know well that incidence of Covid-19 leads to death, they will do their best (i.e.taking care of personal hygiene, staying away from crowded places etc.) to prevent such a risk.Therefore, spread of the awareness about COVID-19 among citizens is an indispensable to prevent COVID-19 outbreak.
Prevention of COVID-19's pandemic, therefore, is a great responsibility (i.e.social, theological, economical, ethical and ecological responsibility) for the human-being society over the world.For instance, Yemeni people, as Muslims, should be aware about the pandemic of COVID-19 hence teachings of the prophet Mohammed (PBUH) guide Muslims to be practically aware about any communicable pandemic disease.Since 14 centuries and 4 decades ago, the Prophet PBUH gave humanity vital instructions deals with such pandemic.He, PBUH, said: "If you hear of an (1) "Awareness is the state or ability to perceive, to feel, or to be conscious of events, objects, or sensory patterns.In this level of consciousness, sense data can be confirmed by an observer without necessarily implying understanding.More broadly, it is the state or quality of being aware of something.In biological psychology, awareness is defined as a human's or an animal's perception and cognitive reaction to a condition or event.outbreak of plague in a land, do not enter it; if the plague breaks out in a place while you are in it, do not leave that place." (2).Furthermore, Apostle of Allah, PBUH, guides us that "the cattle (sheep, cows, camels, etc.) suffering from a disease should not be mixed up with healthy cattle" which means "Do not put a patient with a healthy person)." (3)  Thus, without sufficient and effectiveness awareness toward COVID-19, people are universally run out and the world would lose lots of people which would be a cycle of socio-economic crisis rather than maximizing the morbidity and mortality that would increase the negative COVID-19's socioeconomic impact (Buheji, 2018;Li et al., 2020).
In the context of Yemen, due to the rareness of studies that dealt with studying this pandemic during its prevalence, there is a necessity to study Yemeni people's awareness of COVID-19.Therefore, this study focused on exploring the awareness of Yemeni universities' educators, because if universities' educators have sufficient awareness of COVID-19, they will share such awareness with other people of the whole society.Specifically, this study aimed to explore Amran university's educators' awareness of COVID-19.

Aim of the Study:
It is well-known that spread of the disease such COVID-19 among people is associated with different factors like overcrowding, absence of cleanness, and environmental pollution etc.Yet, it is compounded by the fact that some people have insufficient awareness (i.e.KAP) of infection prevention.Knowledge of a pandemic, such as COVID-19, can influence people attitudes and practice about it, and inappropriate attitudes and practice directly rise the risk of such pandemic.Thus, realizing people's awareness of COVID-19 helps to predict the outcomes of planned behavior.Moreover, educators at universities may have an impact in shaping and spreading the awareness of such pandemic in their societies.Therefore, this study aimed to explore AUEs'A of COVID-19 and it is restricted to only a sample of the educators at Amran University.Specifically, the aim of this study was to answer the following questions: 1-What is the level of AUEs'A towards COVID-19?2-Are there any differences between the mean scores of AUEs'A on the COVID-19's scales at (α=0.05) can be referred to the participants' gender variable (GV)?3-Are there any differences between the mean scores of AUEs'A on the COVID-19's scales at (α=0.05) can be referred to the participants' specialization variable (SV)?4-Are there any differences between the mean scores of AUEs'A on the scales of COVID-19 at (α=0.05) can be referred to the participants' Educational Degree Variable (EDV)?5-Are there any differences between the mean scores of AUEs'A on the scales of COVID-19 at (α=0.05) can be referred to the participants' Faculty Variable (FV)?6-Is there any effect for the independent variables (IVs) of the study (i.e.knowledge, and attitudes scales) on its dependent practice variable (DPV) at (α=0.05)? Hypotheses: To answer the 2 nd , 3 rd , 4 th , 5 th , and 6 th questions, the null and alternative hypotheses were put forward as follows: 1. a. Null hypothesis (H0: μ=0): There are no statistically significant differences between the participants' mean scores on the COVID-19's scales can be referred to participants' GV at (α=0.05)? 1. b. Alternative hypothesis (H1: μ ǂ0): There are no statistically significant differences between the participants' mean scores on the COVID-19's scales can be referred to participants' GV at (α=0.05)? 2. a. Null hypothesis (H0: μ=0): There are no statistically significant differences between the participants' mean scores on the COVID-19's scales at (α=0.05) can be referred to participants' SV? 2. b.Alternative hypothesis (H1: μ ǂ0): There are no statistically significant differences between the participants' mean scores on the COVID-19's scales at (α=0.05) can be referred to participants' SV? 3. a. Null hypothesis (H0: μ=0): There are no statistically significant differences between and within the participants' mean scores on the

Back Ground and Literature Review
Since more than one hundred years ago, scientists have repeatedly changed their collective mind over what viruses are; viruses were thought as poisons, as life forms, and biological chemicals (Villarreal, 2005).Due to the increasing virus numbers after entrance the host's cell as well as its chemical structure, virus is seen as a being in a gray area between living and nonliving thing, i.e. it disables to replicate on its own, whereas it can do so in its host's cells, (Villarreal, 2005).Recently, some researchers stated that virus can be described as chemistry set than as an organism entity, since it consists of nucleic acid, i.e.DNA, or RNA, (Villarreal, 2005).
Fundamentally, metabolism and self-sustaining replication are key basics of the life definition; based on such fundamentals, therefore, viruses are not alive (Brown & Bhella, 2016).Likewise, some scientists thought that possession of ribosomes as well as genes (e.g.viruses) play a vital role in replicating which is concerned as a key component of life definition (Brown & Bhella, 2016;Bhella, 2016).
Although a number of studies, over the world, aimed to explore people's awareness of COVID-19 have been carried out, it was rarely studied in the context of Yemen.While some of those studies were performed on a sample selected from the health care workers (HCWs), other studies were carried out on a sample of students, or some peoples else (Zhou et al., 2020;Deguenon et al., 2020;Taghrir, et al., 2020;Peng et al., 2020).Besides, some studies used questionnaires for collecting data (Zhou et al., 2020;Taghrir, et al., 2020;Peng et al., 2020), while others used an interview for the same purpose (Zhou et al., 2020).
For instance, Zhou et al. (2020) aimed to find out the knowledge, practices, and attitudes of a sample selected from health care workers' (HCWs) on the subject of COVID-19.To this end, Zhou et al. conducted a questionnaire to the sample that was selected form HCWs across 10 hospitals in Henan, China.Results of this study revealed that 89% of the participants (i.e.HCWs) had a sufficient knowledge of COVID-19, more than 85% feared self-infection with it, and 89.7% followed correct practices concerning COVID-19.
In the context of Yemen, Alrubaiee et al. ( 2020) aimed to explore knowledge, attitudes, anxiety, and preventive behaviors among Yemeni HCPs towards COVID-19.To this end, researchers used a web-based-crosssectional study using an on line Google forms questionnaire via different electronic devices (i.e.emails, WhatsApp, Telegram as well as other social media).Data were collected from 1244 of Yemeni healthcare providers.Results of this study revealed that most (69.60%) of the healthcare providers had an adequate knowledge level regarding COVID-19 pandemic, while (29.80%) of them had moderate knowledge, and only (0.60%) had inadequate knowledge about COVID-19 pandemic.The findings indicated that the majority (85.00%) of the respondents had a positive attitude, while (15.00%) of them had a negative attitude toward COVID-19 pandemic.However, although the vast majority of the respondents exhibited a high level of optimistic attitude toward COVID-19 pandemic, (75.1 %) of them still thought that they would not get the disease and almost (29.4%)willing to move to other places within the country to be safe during the pandemic.Also findings of study indicated that nearly above (50%) of the respondents had a moderate level of anxiety toward COVID-19 pandemic, whereas (27.70%) of them had a high level and ( 21

Methods and materials:
This study aimed to explore AUEs'A toward COVID-19.It was conducted as a cross exploration sectional study, i.e. a study involves studying groups of participants in different categories/ groups at the same point in time, (Ciogl, 2009).

Sampling:
An online survey was conducted.A total of 87 Participants were selected from a population consisted of 206 (42%) educators who taught at Amran University, Yemen, as it is illustrates in Table (1).Furthermore, validity and reliability of the scale were figured out.For validity, SCOVID-19 was sent to 10 Experts who were asked to evaluate its items in terms of the scale clarity and accuracy.Experts were also asked to be free in adding, removing, or modifying any part/s of the scale.Eighty percent of consensus among the experts were taken as a criterion to accept the item.As regard to the reliability, Cronbach alpha (α) was figured out and it found as (0.60) which is a suitable coefficient for such study (Taber, 2016), as it is showed in table 4.

Data Analysis
To collect data of the study, participants were on line exposed to SCOVID-19.Then, the collected data were coded and analyzed using Excel and SPSS, version 23.Different statistical tools (e.g.frequencies, means, percentages, orders, standard deviation, t-test, ANOVA, ANCOVA, MANOVA, MANCOVA, etc.) are used to analyze the data of such study (Pallant, 2005).For this study, therefore, percentages, means, orders, standard deviation, t-test, ANOVA, Tukey-HSD, and multiple regression analysis were used for analyzing its data.

Results and Discussion
To answer the 1 st study's question, what is the level of AUEs'A towards COVID-19, descriptive statistics (i.e.percentages, means, standard deviation and orders) were used, as it is presented in the following Tables (i.e.table 4, 5, 6, and 7).As for the scales, results were found as showed in  Table (4) indicates that the scale of practice was ranked as the 1 st order (i.e.98.9%, mean= 2.85, and St, D= 0.38), the 2 nd order was the scale of attitudes (i.e.97.7%, mean= 0.80, and St, D= 0.27) and the scale of knowledge was the 3 rd one (i.e.89.7%, mean= 0.81, and St, D= 0.12).these results indicated that participants have a positive attitudes and practice towards COVID-19 as well as a very good knowledge about it.
Regarding to the 1 st scale's items (i.e.items of the knowledge scale), percentage of each item were calculated.Table (5) shows the percentages of each item of this scale.As it is showed in table (5), percentages of the knowledge scale's items were ranged from (55% to 100%). the smallest percentage was found for the 1st item (55%), while the largest was (100%) for the items (8 and 11).On the other hand, percentages for the rest items were ranged from (62% to 99%).Seventy percent or more (70%≥) was taken as an indicator for accepting participants as a knowledgeable on COVID-19.Based on this criterion, only three items (1, 7 and 10) that their percentages were less than (70%).Therefore, it can be deduced that participants, in general, were knowledgeable about corona virus.This is may be due to their affiliation to the higher education, as educators at faculties of the university.
As for the 1 st item (i.e.Nature of COVID-19 in terms of living ability), the lack of participants' knowledge about the nature of COVID-19 maybe due to the multiple theoretical perspectives of biological scientists towards the nature of viruses according to their ability to be alive.Virus is seen as a being in a gray area between living and nonliving thing, hence it disables to replicate on its own, whereas it can do so in its host's cells, (Villarreal, 2005;Brown & Bhella, 2016).
Regarding to the 7 th item, participants showed a lack of knowledge related to the issue of patients who are more infected by COVID-19.This lack maybe refers to the differentiations between participants' specializations.For instance, participants from scientific fields, such as biology, and medicine fields, are supposed to be more knowledgeable about such issue because they are supposedly exposed to plentiful information about pathogens (e.g.viruses), diseases, and patients.
As for the 2 nd scale's items (i.e.items of the attitudes scale), percentage of each item were calculated.As it is showed in table (6), the responses of participants on the attitudes toward the pandemic COVID-19 were almost 'agree'.Only 2 (i.e. 3, 5) of 12 items (16.67%) of their responses was 'disagree'.Thus, it can be concluded that participants have positive attitudes towards the issue of protection people from infection of COVID-19.
Similarly, percentages of each item of the practice scale's items were figured out, as it is showed in table (7).As it is illustrated by table ( 7), all responses on the practicing's scale were 'often' except for (3) items (2,5, and 7).While the participants used word 'sometimes' as an answer for only the 2nd item, they used word 'always' for responding the 5th, and 7th items.The result which relates to the practice scale indicates that participants have a good behavior according to the issue of pandemic COVID-19.

Faculty Education, Art, & Applied Sciences 58 66.7 Administration 12 13.8 Engineering 10 11.5 Medicine 7 0.8 Instrumentation:
A scale, multiple choice questions, of COVID-19 (SCOVID-19) was developed by the 1 st researcher as an instrument to fulfill this study.The scale included four demographic variables: gender, specialization, educational level, and faculty that participants belong to.The scale consisted of 38 items that covered three sub-scales, as it is illustrated in table 2.

Table ( 6
) shows the percentages of each item of this scale.